The Value And Problems Of Acculturation Research:a Critique

Acculturation is defined as those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups. The core problem of intercultural communication is how we communicate with others, and then acculturation research examines the changes and the causes and effects of those changes in the intercultural communication. The key word of acculturation is change, which involves both outcomes and the processes. The complex nature of the phenomenon has been the driving force of the research.Academic efforts to study acculturation phenomenon have been extensive across different schools and social disciplines. Although the field has benefited from rich information and insights, it suffers from disconnectedness. Owing to their different understandings and focuses, analytical methods and approaches, theories and practices of acculturation research are huddled and scattered, which don’t make for a systematic framework in the intercultural communication. As a result, many theories with limited perspective focus on partial aspects and approaches, finally fail to explore and explain the phenomenon comprehensively.The individual-level studies try to find out the universal factors affecting acculturation to solve individuals’psychological and social problems. Cross-cultural psychologists hold that human beings as members of a single species, share basic psychological processes and capacities. Culture influences their development and performance. They follow the cause-and-effect paradigm of mainstream psychology, regarding peoplesmentalities and behaviors as dependent variables whose value depend on independent variables and quasi-independent variables of personality and culture to test the universality of psychological regularities across different nations, countries, and cultures. The initial research addressed physical and physiological symptoms in the process of acculturation and gradually has realized the complex devious and active nature of it. Cross-cultural psychologists have focused on affecting factors of personality, self-orientation and reaction, acculturation strategies, acculturative stress and adaptation. The individual-level studies have furthered from cross-sectional study of attitudes to affective, behavioral and cognitive changes and to individuals’competence and performance. However, because of flaws in the methodology and epistemology, empirical researches have made apparent progresses but with no confident conclusions. At the individual level, its contradiction lies in the problem between the universalization of psychological interpretation and diverse people-in-culture.Individuals’affective, behavioral and cognitive changes are closely related to their social interactions. Thus communicators try to find solutions to address the problems by effective interpersonal and intergroup communication. They hold that individuals adaptation relies on the quantities and characteristics of their communication with host society. They reduce acculturation problems to a practical and operational level by obtaining skills of intergroup communication and management of uncertainty and anxiety and by building host communication competence through cultural learning and training. The researchers better explain acculturation phenomenon by analyzing individuals’ communication network. They hold that effective supporting networks help relieve the stress. However, they commit to increasing the degree of integration into the host society and fail to keep the balance between the autonomy of self and heterogeneous culture, thus they lose the balance between self and others. Furthermore, acculturation research at this level circumvents social conflicts and the reality of misdistribution of social resources.Studies at social-cultural level view culture as a system of cultural elements, sets and patterns. Researchers try to examine, compare, and expose how cultural factors influence acculturative conditions. They employ cultural patterns, dimensions, values and cultural distance as independent variables to prove their correlations to acculturation. In the traditional society with clear boundary, such analysis helps people get knowledge of unpredictable other culture and people so as to transcend the barriers of cultures in intercultural communication. But in the context of globalization, the representations of different cultures are indistinct and unidentifiable, so the sweeping generalization and essentialization of culture cant reveal the complex and intermingled nature of acculturation. Such research at a national level tends to resonate with political authorities, and is likely to be served as a way to maintain their cultural hegemony and expand their international markets, and finally reduce to a manipulation of powerful elites.The problems reflected from the three levels above indicate that there are inherent flaws in the acculturation research in the field of intercultural communication. They are as follows:1. in epistemology, acculturation is considered to have universal rules and laws. Researchers can find and predict them by assumptions and deductive reasoning.2. In accord with the naturalistic paradigm, acculturation and related constructs are operationalized through standardized scales and theorems and statistical analysis, which is not studied as a process that unfolds in time.3. It seems that there are few culture elements in acculturation research. That is, research papers lack culture studies as it relates to acculturation.4. The subjects are restricted to elites in the western world. It is high time to expand the focus to the non-western world, migrant sub-cultural groups and those disadvantaged groups. Only by improving and avoiding the flaws mentioned above, can acculturation research in intercultural communication prosper and have a brighter future.